Elizabeth Carnegie

Re-enactment Events and Tourism: Meaning, Authenticity and Identity

Re-enactment events have began to play a significant role in the calendars of individual attractions, regions or even nations to generate media exposure, develop inbound tourism activity and raise the cultural heritage profile of a locality for community development and/or regeneration purposes. The (re-)presentation of cultural heritage in these forms creates a unique set of interactions between landscapes, local communities, tourists and heritage organisations. In the recent past however, re-enactment events have been subjected to increased debate and criticism as to their educational value and meaning and for their contribution to understandings of cultural heritage in post-modern consumer societies. This paper presents an interdisciplinary review of these debates and draws on small scale research findings to reassess the value of re-enactment events as a means of presenting heritage to audiences. The paper argues that re-enacted historical events achieve a range of purposes and provides examples of evidence from a range of differing perspectives including: public policy and event organisers; re-enactors and academics in the field. It argues that the professional heritage industry, tourists, and re-enactors all contribute to making such events meaningful and as such they represent unique frames through which to understand issues of authenticity and identity in the production and consumption of post-modern cultural heritage attractions.

Pilgrimage: Journeying Beyond Self

This paper explores how the experience of pilgrimage can contribute towards the subsequent sustained transformation of individual and community well-being. In so doing it examines four areas. The first is to draw a conceptual map that emphasizes the linkages between pilgrimage and wellness tourism and explores the larger meaning of the words ‘wellness’ and ‘spirituality’. The intention is to form a working definition and context in which to examine the well-being aspects of pilgrimage and the experiences it provides. The second area focuses briefly on what spirituality and pilgrimage mean. In so doing, it goes beyond the idea of pilgrimage as a journey to a sacred place, and concentrates more on the journeying itself, the importance of community and the space the journey affords for reflection on its physical, emotional and spiritual aspects. The third area considers two case studies from the pilgrimage experience. The first of these draws on the experiences of those who have travelled overland to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, while the second considers the experiences of people who have undertaken various charity treks as another form of pilgrimage. The individual experiences, drawn from those with religious affiliations and those with none, indicate how a challenging physical and emotional journey often—but not always—results in not only an enhanced physical well-being, but also a better understanding of self and others, a chance for renewal, and a learning experience that can be carried forward into daily life. The fourth area discusses how wellness tourism might react to those seeking more meaning to their lives through the journeying experience rather than the arrival.

Catalysts for change? Museums of religion in a pluralist society

Changing attitudes to religion in society have allowed museums to review the way their collections of artefacts, which have religious relevance and resonance, are displayed and interpreted. Yet, despite the fact that religion has been one of the key defining factors of cultures, there are very few museums which actually interpret multi‐faith. This paper argues that museums have the potential to create a forum for visitors to explore the role of faith in their own lives and to develop a fuller understanding of social and cultural change as it affects religious identities in the modern world. It focuses on three key contrasting museums of religion, which have developed because of cultural and religious change. They are The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow; the Museum of World Religions (MWR), Taiwan; and the State Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg. Their intended role and purpose is determined to establish how or if they succeed in delivering a multi‐faith museum experience whilst being subject to the social/cultural and religious biases inherent in their organisational structure. Lastly, some consideration is given to whether they act as museums or religious spaces. The paper concludes that they function as secular and therefore cultural spaces in which visitors may seek to explore their own religious or spiritual feelings.

Reading Pro-Am theatre through a serious leisure lens: organisational and policy-making implications.

Amateur theatre has often suffered from a stigma of incompetence, and the view that while participants enjoy their involvement, they are unable to impact on the professional realm. Recent policy from Arts Council England and major projects from the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre Wales suggest the amateur contribution is increasingly being recognised and celebrated. This article explores the emerging role of the non-professional in contemporary British theatre through the ‘Pro-Am’ initiative – whereby amateurs and professionals work collaboratively. It initially considers how serious leisure theories such as collective amateurism, flow, subjective well-being, social identity and culture of commitment can be applied to the Pro-Am theatre context and explore the challenge of negotiating the commitments of a serious leisure pursuit with participants’ ‘real lives’. Methods employed include case study, semi-structured interviews, observation and a focus group. Data are presented from the perspective of professional practitioners who facilitate Pro-Am work in regional, producing theatres and other industry experts, supported by some additional participant comments. Implications for arts organisations delivering this kind of work are then addressed. Findings reflect many of the outcomes outlined in the theory, and we conclude that the broadening of categories and the increasing popularity of Pro-Am initiatives are breaking boundaries, changing the very nature of amateurism.

Curating creation: allowing ‘the divine a foot in the door’ of Leeds City Museum?

This article examines critical and visitor responses to a section on ‘alternative’ creation stories located within Life on Earth, a science-led natural history gallery, at Leeds Museums and Galleries, UK. This section, by inviting visitors to express alternative creation stories, appears to allow ‘a foot in the door’ of the science-led gallery to non-fact-based religious beliefs. The museological debates surrounding this inclusion offer broad insights into the tensions between fact-based, and essentially secular, interpretations within museums displays and the relationships that an increasingly multi-faith public have or can expect to have with the museum as a provider of and location of, knowledge. A consideration of the visitor comments suggests that the public are less concerned with the appropriateness of museum categories than they are with taking the opportunity to express their own thoughts and beliefs.

Managing cultural heritage: an international research perspective

The final chapter explores the ramifications of the ‘National Culture Policy’ after 1969, which sought to recognise indigenous culture unless it ‘hindered material progress’ (208) alongside other qualifications. Throughout the 1980s, many minority groups protested against the Malaycentrist and Islam-oriented view of ‘national culture’ and demanded a greater inclusivity, a process apparently far from concluded. As a result, many museums take part in the folklorisation of nonMalay culture, which is largely reduced to inoffensive surface phenomena and material objects. However, there are by now ‘competing museums and competing heritage’ (232), especially between Malays and Malaysian Chinese, which in turn serves to exclude yet other minority groups from the public arena. The conclusion finally turns to one heritage that is largely unacknowledged – British rule, which began already in 1874 in places, and which brought with it waves of immigration from India, China, and Indonesia. The book here becomes near mandatory reading for scholars of historical representation in – say – Myanmar, which wrestles with similar issues in comparable but sufficiently different ways. The author thus diagnoses both a ‘history war’ and a ‘culture war’ being fought in and through and with Malaysian museums, but ends by raising doubts regarding the final significance of these wars: